


Waves and Kites

by demonsLOver



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13197180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsLOver/pseuds/demonsLOver
Summary: If Lance could save his family at the cost of his own life ― he would do so in a heartbeat. This war continues to take and steal and he will not lose one of them.Not if he could help it.He was a boy with a body meant for the waters, the seas and oceans. Lance dreamt of reaching clouds and endless sky and what laid beyond.His kite is destroyed by ocean waves.





	Waves and Kites

**Author's Note:**

> *looks at the 70+ WIPs in my Google Doc file* alright your the shortest
> 
> Music: WOODKID - I Love You (Quintet Version)

Weightless and falling, Lance thinks of home. 

No. He was never meant to have wings, to soar.

Roaring winds match the sound of unfurling waves as the sky looks far and wide. A heavy crash splashing in water meets his ears, Blue must have hit. He tried to save her. She tried to save him. They fail beautifully.

They're a tragedy and comedy in this cosmic tale. A story that is ending too soon, too fast but he's leaving.

He's heading home.

And pain flairs. He doesn't remember how he ended out of Blue. How he's falling. How he ended up where he is. The wound bleeds drops into air. He's creating bloody rain. It hurts, it pulls him to unconsciousness and back with the wind as a harsh wake up call.

But the impact…from this height, this fall. He's not going to survive.

He couldn't tell if it was the roar of rushing wind and churning waves, but there's a roar. Not in his ears, but in his heart. A lion's roar but not one of pride and bravery, it is angry, afraid. It wasn't Blue. His girl has gone quiet during this long fall, and their goodbyes are unsaid.

Everything is blue. The wide sky. The gorgeous ocean.

The water. He could hear how close it was but his blurred wet eyes focused on a moving object in the distance. Red against blue, growing bigger with every second, speeding like a runaway comet.

Lance smiles. His kite was only meant to stay in the air for so long. One day, it will fall, like the day it hit ocean. Too destroyed to fly again. That Red shining thing in the sky is close, so close but so far. Always so far, so high on its wings. Lance could never compare.

_ Lance. Please. No. _

Drops of water touch him first.

Death takes him second.

 

\--

 

“ _ LANCE!” _ He screams. The cross-hair on screen targets Lance and Blue falling forms. He zooms as far as he could. His heart sinks as Blue crashes and is hidden by churning waves. Fears sings in his veins as the waters seem to grasp for their next victim. 

He pushes the thrusters. Pushes Red. Pushes everything else as he dives.

“I can make it!”

_ “Keith—” _ Shiro tries but Keith will not listen.

“Come on Red! Faster!”

_ 5000 Feet _

Red rattles at their descending speed. Gravity and thrusters pushes them faster. Red's overheating but she doesn't care. She worries for her sister that hasn't responded. Blue has suffered through worse but there was a touch of sorrow and farewell Red did not want to accept.

Little Blue was once in her heart. Having too much kindness and sacrifice that she knew this Pride would not be the same.

She would not be the same. Her Little Red would never recover.

“Come on, come on, come on.” Keith urges. Red and him sync quintessence, using Red's speed ability to the extreme, even if invisible weights push on every bone and threatening to break.

Keith pushes. Red pushed. Lance is falling to a watery death.

_ 2000 Feet _

What? Already? No.  _ No. _ At this speed, at this rate he won't make it. The speedometer on screen climbing numbers. Warnings flash, indicating to pull up but Red throws away caution.

_ 800 Feet _

_ “Keith! Pull up! PULL UP!” _

At one hundred feet, Lance is gone beneath the waves. Keith can't see him.

Reverse thrusting, he cushions his impact into the water below.

He pants for air. Red cools in the water, quiet and stunned into silence. Something white catches his eye. He doesn't stop his sobs or his fists that bang the control panel with every bit of painful defeat. Painful failure.

Echoing alongside the cries are his knees as they hit the metal off the floor. From the cockpit, he doesn't need to hear this god awful singular sound of an alert as in his soul where his family become one, are Voltron, is a torn vanishing piece. Where was once a wave of life is now pure emptiness.

There's Lance.

Sinking to the same seas he would admire, tell about, speak to. Sinking as it's his bed and coffin. Sinking, leaving a trail of red blood from impact to his sinking corpse. A line of red watercolor plumes and ribbons as the oceans took him deeper and farther.

A line the same as Lance's heart rate.

Keith tosses his helmet, grips his hairs, reaches out with a trembling hand against the glass… and bows his head.

Hangs his head in defeat. Guilt. Loss.  _ He loses everything. _

And there's Lance.

Red and blue all over.

 

*

 

When he escapes his catatonic state, rage takes over. It was avoidable. Preventable. 

It should have been him. He replays the mission over and over again in his mind. It's him that was at the wrong place. That decided to take a risky move, leaving himself wide open and Lance making the choice to die.

He thought he was over making rash decisions. Years of war teaching the hard way of patience. In the heat of the moment, he loses himself to the fight. He takes his twelve. Lance  _ always _ had his six.

Lance takes the hit. Barrier up as the laser struck but it was futile.

“That should have been me!”

He disregarded Lance's word of caution. Caution turned into panic, leaving Lance with the choice to move and die or do nothing and fail.

“Keith—”

“You know it too, Shiro.”

Shiro, red eyed and tear stained, looks away in shame. That ray of death struck fear in Shiro. He's lost too much to the Galra, the Empire, this war. Losing Keith before his eyes was a soulful death sentence. His yell would be the second of action to save Keith. He wouldn't reach in time but Lance did.

Keith didn't.

Lance fell like a shot bird from the sky. Bleeding, falling, and to die when it met the ground. He wasn't prepared to see it, to  _ feel  _ dry, hung, and laid bare to the sun. Everything off balance as that piece of  _ water, ice, warmth _ was erased—deleted from his core.

Hunk, Pidge, and Allura gasped over comms. Shaken and confused of what they felt as they were in the enemy base. It was easy to figure out what happened when a piece of your soul simply vanishes to the afterlife.

Shiro is lost, has lost, and this loss scars intangible insides with gore like scars.

“It should have been me.” Keith whimpers, “And you're sorry it wasn't.”

Shiro cries. Recalls Lance's last words.

_ “Take care of him, Shiro.” _

Lance was truly too good for this world.

 

\--

She jumps at the sound. She turns off the sink as she walks in into the living room. Her eyes water for the thousandth time. The candles light a soft glow on Lance's face. The old wooden traditional picture frame since her great-great grandmother's time fitting her son's cadet photograph. 

The scent of smoke startles her deeply. Lance's beloved kite hanged above the frame has fallen. 

It's on fire.

She rushes to pat the flames away but it's too late. The canvas of the kite is seared. The wood burned and brittle. The string burned away to a short length. It could have been fixed long ago but her mijo refused to let it be repaired. And now, it was ruined. Her hands are shaking, sobs breathe into the world as her heart can't take this in. The rosary that she hanged on the kite has fallen between the candles, landing in front of her son's image.

It can't be.

Her children know, from her screams and cries, their brother will never fly again.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
